19:14pm,  23/08/2010

I

What names of high renown lie here within,
What wonders of a cinematic age?
What players of chameleonic skin,
What vast dimensions leap beyond the stage?

Withnail and I would walk this hallowed road,
Dreaming of turning visions into deeds;
Train-spotting trains of thought that overflowed,
Where levity had trampled karma's seeds.

Tread softly here and utter not a sound,
The scene is set, for all lost here below,
With all forsaken dreamers underground
And all who yearned to go on with the show.

For all the lost, forsaken and foregone,
Dead lips whisper of "Hunt" and "Cameron".


II

Walkways of fame, like dreaming colonnades,
Gold sunrise shoots that everyone admired;
Lost eras when producers all wore shades,
And divas turned up early and inspired.

Hot cappuccino served with bright ideas
In cool cafés and bistros of desire;
Their ghostly image flares - then disappears,
With all who held the torch of inner fire.

All those who now endorse perfumes and creams
And those in pantomimes on seaside piers,
Remember well who crucified their dreams
Replacing honeyed hopes with bitter tears.

Inscribed in blood, their torrid names live on
- Don't speak to us of Hunt and Cameron.


III

A beautiful laundrette, deserted now,
Reduced to an accountant's numeral;
Open the wine and slay the fatted cow,
To find the wedding's now a funeral.

And did we, in good faith, believe their lies,
Electing them to office, fuelled by hope?
Now strung along by feeble alibis,
And all because we gave them enough rope?

Hope is the dreamer's dope. We who despair
Are never fooled by optimism's glitz;
Sometimes we are too fatalist to care,
Sometimes we must accuse, where the cap fits.

The coalition's follies blunder on
Up the Junction, with Hunt and Cameron.


IV

Avert thine eyes, Tim Bevan, CBE,
A tempest comes, on terrible black wings,
A blight hath fallen on the industry
That used to bring such bright imaginings.

Our protestations have a Little Voice
That Whitehall deems too indistinct to hear,
Must we the free be faced without a choice,
Must everything we loved now disappear?

Tread softly here, for it's the final take,
No accidental noise disturbs the boom,
As art is crucified for money's sake
Respectful silence settles in the gloom.

Sometimes progress moves backwards and is gone,
Like bright ideas by Hunt and Cameron.


The End....?

by J.B.S. Haldane

I wish I had the voice of Homer
To sing of ****** carcinoma,
Which kills a lot more chaps, in fact,
Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked.
Yet, thanks to modern surgeon’s skills,
It can be killed before it kills
Upon a scientific basis
In nineteen out of twenty cases.
I noticed I was passing blood
(Only a few drops, not a flood).
So pausing on my homeward way
From Tallahassee to Bombay
I asked a doctor, now my friend,
To peer into my hinder end,
To prove or to disprove the rumour
That I had a malignant tumour.
They pumped in BaS04.
Till I could really stand no more,
And, when sufficient had been pressed in,
They photographed my large intestine,
In order to decide the issue
They next scraped out some bits of tissue.
(Before they did so, some good pal
Had knocked me out with pentothal,
Whose action is extremely quick,
And does not leave me feeling sick.)
The microscope returned the answer
That I had certainly got cancer,
So I was wheeled into the theatre
Where holes were made to make me better.
One set is in my perineurn
Where I can feel, but can’t yet see ‘em.
Another made me like a kipper
Or female prey of Jack the Ripper,
Through this incision, I don’t doubt,
The neoplasm was taken out,
Along with colon, and lymph nodes
Where cancer cells might find abodes.
A third much smaller hole is meant
To function as a ventral vent:
So now I am like two-faced Janus
The only* god who sees his ****.
I’ll swear, without the risk of perjury,
It was a snappy bit of surgery.
My ****** is a serious loss to me,
But I’ve a very neat colostomy,
And hope, as soon as I am able,
To make it keep a fixed time-table.
So do not wait for aches and pains
To have a surgeon mend your drains;
If he says “cancer” you’re a dunce
Unless you have it out at once,
For if you wait it’s sure to swell,
And may have progeny as well.
My final word, before I’m done,
Is “Cancer can be rather fun”.
Thanks to the nurses and Nye Bevan
The NHS is quite like heaven
Provided one confronts the tumour
With a sufficient sense of humour.
I know that cancer often kills,
But so do cars and sleeping pills;
And it can hurt one till one sweats,
So can bad teeth and unpaid debts.
A spot of laughter, I am sure,
Often accelerates one’s cure;
So let us patients do our bit
To help the surgeons make us fit
____________
.
*In India there are several more
With extra faces, up to four,
But both in Brahma and in Shiva
I own myself an unbeliever.

                                  J. B. S. Haldane (1964)

It all disappears
replaced by a phantom,
the flickering light of a coal miners lantern casts its shadow along the black halls and it all disappears.
Bevan would spin in his grave knowing his lads could not save what remained of his dream,
and in the lean light of lamplight the nightwatch calls midnight,
and it all disappears.

We were born into a world that exploded with light emitting diodes,and nuclear power,turbines that whine in constant revolution,
a green world, a clean world, a world fit for tomorrow where the future is born from the ashes of sorrow and these tears we would borrow from the seeds that we sow ,
and it all disappears in the fears of the many,of those, who if they had any hope,have it no more,where the door is locked and the bolt is drawn against this brave new dawn,and sometimes it feels like I never was born ,
but created from eggshells and no one tells me that I'm wrong.

Cracked open my breath breaks away, and the inside exposed,peeled like the petals that rose on some bloom,the shrivelling doom, a vast mushrooming cloud,
and it makes me feel proud,
as it all disappears and we all fade away.

I remember that first excitement
Flowing through my heart
Pumping the life within
The baby soon to become
A son or daughter.

And I walk in gathered dress
Blue it was, with broderie anglaise
On a square yoke, falling
To above my knee
The doors slid open
Welcoming me in
The reception of life.

Recalling simply kindness,
A resplendent building,
Efficiency.
Open that year, 1970,
All ready for me.
And she was born there
Named after a ward
Katharine Maria
Seven pounds and eight ounces,
Dark hair and eyes,
And I felt loved.

Today, forty seven years on
And where love flourished
Weeds grow
Along the corridors
Of power, the *****
Toilets, empty beds,
No one wants to be
Here anymore.

We all left for home births
Our husbands and families.
Was the decline our fault?
Did our selfish desires
Perpetuate indifference?
I stood and cried
Watching the perfection
Of an idea wash away.

Love Mary x

Bring to me your broken down
Your rattling and cracked
Send me all your fractured hearts
The pains; the sprains and smarts

Deliver to me your wounded
Your tortured mentally alone
Pass to me your elderly infirm
The babies born before their term

Rush to me your weak of will
Your dependant; addicted and lost
Blow to me those down on their knees
The drunk. Morose. Self-inflicted injuries

Laugh with me at human things
Your odd accidents and stories
Triage with me as I tend the wound
Make you better than the you I found

Present to me your desperate
Your shattered and your morbid
Breathe with me as surgery makes well
Exhale! On my skill your fate befell

Lay on me your one in three
Your canker’d and your wretched
Move to me those at end of time
When curtain falls on final pantomime

Please bear with me when times get hard
When I slip up and make odd mistake
Pray for me at seventy. No dotage; still I strive
So proud to play my part in keeping you alive

Raise thanks with me for visionary
My creator; father Aneurin Bevan
Have patience with me when I seem slow
Many patients to see in daily ebb and flow.

©pofacedpoetry (Billy Reynard-Bowness 2018 – All rights reserved)

So lets say i was heaven sent
Plus potion. And experience

Plus a luck and loading instrument
The circumference circumvents

Like lost treasure monuments
Just because Bevan wrote a sentence

But since I spent the last night dense
In a dent and door dipped In fence

The a is compressed and condensed
Considered the presents in PAst tense

I am so unique and mistique icons
And Zero one deep triple THReat bigon

The titans and the mOGULs atom ions
The confusion television light neon

I complain he'll jacket burnt on
Gabriel Raphael Micheal with corn

I adorn and amend  the truth pon
Like chess the rook took knight con

Now celebrate the acorn and the nut chasing a horn and who be born

Then the antitrust antichriST worn
The widdow. Wife mislife scorn

Go complain about a woman 's scorn
Deserving the world sounds and alarm

Let's not bother an earth worm
The Bermuda triangle bahevean arm...
**^ #thejscenemovement

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